Every day, I am reminded that I am no longer innocent. There may have been a moment when I was just born that I had abounding innocence. I had a freshness, an openness, an uncontaminated experience of the world, at least for a few moments. Perhaps my conditioning had already begun at the moment that I got genes from my mother and my father. But it is easier to think of the moment I was born.
Then things started to change as I began to get conditioned by the world around me. My parents had a large part in that because they had the good intentions of preparing me for my entry into human civilization. They began to shape me so that I might fit into my tribe, something they did consciously, aware as they were of what it meant to be their kind of human. Often they shaped me unconsciously, unaware of their own conditioning that prepared them for this task as parents.
Today it is my prime intention to rid myself of much of that conditioning that has shaped me for over seven decades. My parents were my first artisans but I have been conditioned by so many other relationships in my life. I want to reclaim my original gift of innocence and see each day as though I have never seen a day before. I intend to put the apparent sequence of time aside and meet every thing for the first time.
For me, this is one of the gifts of aging, to be able to begin again without fear, with complete trust and acceptance. Each hour is its own beginning, and I want to enter it as though I have never before known what an hour is and what it will be in the future.
I am slowly putting aside most of the constructs that have guided my life and my imagination. These are the conditioning that have shaped how I have experienced the world. I want to keep only those aspects of me that help me see things as they really are, which means no preconceptions.
I am trying to strip away nearly everything I have learned, and rely on the constructs that open my senses and my mind to the world as it truly is. Each step I take is my first step. I rely on the memory embedded in my muscles as a toddler to keep me upright and balanced. I touch the ground with the excitement of discovery. This is what the earth feels like. This is what it feels like to move through space and time. This is what the air feels like against my skin as I move.
Reclaiming innocence is not easy. Not only do I have to unlearn much of what I have learned. I also have to resist new learnings that attempt to shape me each day. It is a struggle I am routinely aware of. It is the reason I refuse to listen to reports that feed my imagination with images of fear.
I choose instead the pursuit of innocence. I love the experience of drifting into each new moment uncertain of the outcome. The ambiguity of each connection I make fills me with wonder. I know I cannot control the outcome, but neither can it shape me without my choosing.